


Feeling the Pull

by theladyscribe



Series: Hockey WIP Amnesty [9]
Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Abandoned Work - Unfinished and Discontinued, Bodyswap, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-19
Updated: 2019-01-19
Packaged: 2019-10-12 17:49:50
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,433
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17472152
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theladyscribe/pseuds/theladyscribe
Summary: The pieces start to come together — the apparent memory loss, the unexpected facial hair, the trans-Atlantic travel.He swapped with someone.Not only that, but it was apparently a strong enough switch to pull him across an ocean. Swaps of that magnitude are the rarest of the rare, a tiny percentage of an already rare phenomenon. Carl's gut churns, a wave of terror washing over him.He doesn't get a chance to fully panic because there's noise in the hallway, followed by a knock on the door and Amanda Kessel saying, "Hey, Phil, you want breakfast? I'm gonna get bialys from the bagel shop."





	Feeling the Pull

**Author's Note:**

> This fic has been in my WIPs folder for two-and-a-half years, so it's time to let it go.
> 
> Title is from the song of the same name by Swell Season.

Carl wakes up to the sound of New York sirens outside, the high-pitched wail of an ambulance followed by twin pumps of a firetruck's horn. Fucking sirens. He hates them.

He rolls over to check the time, hoping that it's early enough that he can go back to sleep before his alarm goes off, only to find that his nightstand has moved. Carl opens his eyes more fully and feels his stomach lurch. He sits up.

The room is small and unfamiliar, painted a light blue, probably in an attempt to hide the cracked plaster near the ceiling. There are two windows, a poster print of some abstract artwork between them, the bed, which, on second glance, seems to be an IKEA sofa-bed, and an end table with a reading lamp. This is not _his_ New York apartment.

And then it hits him. Of course it wouldn't be his apartment — he sold his place in New York _months_ ago. All of his stuff from both New York and L.A. is in Pittsburgh now, ready and waiting until he comes back to the city for training camp.

So.

This isn't Mats' place, or Hank's. The paint's too rough-edged, the room too cramped, for it to belong to _any_ of his former teammates. Which means Carl went home with a stranger last night.

Whoever it was, they're obviously living out of the suitcase jammed between the bed and the window. He must have been drunk out of his _mind_.

And _fuck_ , why the hell is he in New York, anyway? The last thing he remembers was turning out the lights in his bedroom at his parents' house in Södertälje. If he's lost time, lost memories, lost _at least_ an entire fucking day of trans-Atlantic travel, he's well and truly fucked.

Carl rubs a hand over his face, and that. That's a beard. A full beard, not the goatee and sideburns he sports during the playoffs. Carl's gut clenches as the pieces start to come together — the apparent memory loss, the unexpected facial hair, the _trans-Atlantic travel_.

He swapped with someone.

Not only that, but it was apparently a strong enough switch to pull him across an ocean. Swaps of that magnitude are the rarest of the rare, a tiny percentage of an already rare phenomenon. Carl's gut churns, a wave of terror washing over him.

He doesn't get a chance to fully panic because there's noise in the hallway, followed by a knock on the door and Amanda Kessel saying, "Hey, Phil, you want breakfast? I'm gonna get bialys from the bagel shop."

 _Shit_.

This is worse than he thought.

"Phil?" Amanda rattles the doorknob. "You awake?"

"Yeah!" Carl says, not sure whether he should try to sound like Phil or not. He coughs. "Bialys sound good. I'll — I'm not dressed."

Amanda stops rattling the door. "You don't need to come with; I'll be back in like ten minutes. Maybe fifteen if they're busy."

"Okay," Carl says, sure it comes out a little strangled.

He waits until he hears the apartment door shut and flops back on the bed. Carl is so fucked.

The thing about swapping is it doesn't happen to everyone. There are theories about how and why it happens, but no one knows exactly what causes it. Carl read at least one study in college which posited that it's caused by a combination of genetics and external circumstances, usually stress. There'd been a footnote that people in Scandinavia reported higher instances of swapping than any other geographic region, but it was unknown if this was due to a genetic predisposition or to a lack of stigma surrounding swapping that in turn prompted people to self-report. Carl knows a lot of people in America are significantly less circumspect about it. He hopes Phil isn't having a panic attack. He hopes he can keep _himself_ from having a panic attack.

To that end, he forces himself to take a deep breath and let it out slowly, and another and another until he can think calmly enough to form a plan. He'll call Phil, and they'll figure it out. That seems solid enough.

Carl sits up again and casts about for Phil's phone. He finds it on the night stand, half hidden under a mystery novel. He unlocks it with the thumbprint ID and is surprised to find that Phil's phone background is a picture of the two of them from the Cup parade. Carl doesn't take time to dwell on that, going straight for the contacts. He opens up his own information and hits his number, hoping that someone — anyone — picks up on the other end. 

"Hello? Carl?"

It is very strange to hear your own voice spoken by someone not you. Carl has to take a moment before he can say, "Phil?"

"Oh thank god," Phil breathes into his ear with a flatter American accent than Carl himself has ever been able to achieve. "What the hell, Haggy?"

Carl laughs a little hysterically. "Phil, I think… I think we swapped."

Phil snorts. "No shit, Sherlock. I usually don't wake up naked in a strange bed in Sweden."

"... Right. Sorry. It's summer," Carl says, figuring that's as much explanation as needed.

"Not like I haven't seen it before," Phil says, though his tone is a little too jovial for him to have been entirely comfortable.

"Sorry," Carl says again.

Silence stretches awkwardly between them before Phil rescues the conversation by asking, "Is Amanda there?"

"She went to get bialys. I haven't said anything to her yet. Are my parents—?"

"Yeah," Phil says. He lets out a genuine laugh. "Your mom knew right away. Asked me who I was and what I'd done with her son. When I told her it was me, she grumbled something in Swedish and then told me to come downstairs for breakfast."

"Of course she did," Carl says drily. He can imagine what his mother said, probably something fondly disparaging about Dad's side of the family and their penchant for swapping. "Will Amanda take it that well, do you think?"

"Dunno. Probably not? You might want to make sure there aren't any hockey sticks nearby when you tell her."

"Duly noted."

There's a lengthy pause and then Phil says, "So, what are we gonna do about this?"

"Swap back?" Carl says, maybe a little too flippant.

There's another pause on the line, and then Phil asks, flatly, " _How_?"

In America, Carl knows, you're supposed to alert the local governance if a swap happens. In theory, they'll help you find a non-invasive way to swap back, though in practice, their methods are widely ridiculed both in the States and abroad. Besides, proximity is paramount when it comes to swapping back, so they're going to need to be in the same place at some point. It makes more sense for him to go to Phil.

"I'll fly home," he says. "I can be there in two days."

"Won't that draw attention to us?" Phil asks, worry tinging his voice.

He's right, it might, if word gets out that Phil is flying to Sweden for no apparent reason in the middle of the summer. Carl thinks for a moment. His Cup day isn't close enough to justify Phil coming to visit _now_ , but.

"Maybe you're just taking a European vacation, and I invited you to come visit for part of it."

"I hate flying," Phil says. "This is a known fact, no thanks to Bones."

"We'll think of something," Carl assures him. He's about to say more, but he hears the apartment door slam. "I think that's Amanda. I should probably go. I'll call you back in a little while, okay?"

Phil lets out a heavy sigh. "Okay. Talk to you later. Let me know how it goes."

"I will. Bye."

"Phil?" Amanda says through the door as Carl ends the call. "Bialys are here."

"I'll be right out," he says.

He finds Amanda in the kitchen, unloading more than just the bialys from her bag. He'd help but the kitchen is tiny, barely enough space for her to move around, let alone two people. Besides, she's nearly finished.

"So," Amanda says as she puts the milk in the fridge, "who was on the phone at nine in the morning?"

"No one," Carl says, trying to keep his voice mild.

Amanda casts him a skeptical look as she pulls a knife out of a drawer for the cream cheese spread. "Uh-huh. So you were just talking to yourself?"

Carl helps himself to a bialy, moving to sit at the little dinette table. "In a manner of speaking," he says to himself.

"What was that?" Amanda asks, sitting down across from him.

Carl puts his bialy down and waits for Amanda to do the same. "This is going to sound crazy," he says slowly, "but I'm not Phil. I'm Carl. Hagelin. His teammate?"

"This is a really dumb prank, Phil," Amanda laughs. "Nice try, though." She takes a bite of her bialy.

Carl shakes his head. "I'm serious, Amanda. We _swapped_."

Amanda stares at him, chewing on her bialy. "Okay then, say something in Swedish."

Carl rolls his eyes but says, " _Your brother said this might be difficult, but at least you're not beaning me with a hockey stick_."

Amanda swallows. "Fuck. How? Why?"

Carl shrugs. He has his theories, but he's not about to say them out loud, especially not to Phil's sister. "Stress? Catharsis? Random spike in our temporal waves? Too much lime in our coconuts last night? Who knows?"

Amanda eyes him like she knows it's bullshit, but she doesn't call him on it.

 

 

*

"Mats is hosting a summer hockey camp," he says. "It's next week. I'm supposed to be there anyway, and if anyone asks, you're coming to help with that. And if we're not sorted out by the end of the week, then you'll be staying for my Cup day." There. Easy.

"Mats won't care if I invite myself to his camp?" Phil asks doubtfully.

"I'll call him," Carl assures him. "It'll be fine."

"If you're sure."

"I am." He's not. "I'll call him right now, if you want."

"He won't — he won't be upset? That you swapped with me?"

Carl frowns. "No? Why —" He stops short, remembering a conversation he'd had with Derek and Kreids about swaps. They'd been convinced that there was no such thing as a platonic swap. It had taken him an hour of pulling up academic articles about swapping to convince them it was possible, though Carl still isn't sure they fully believed him.

"Swaps aren't just about sex, you know," he says softly, just in case Phil _doesn't_ know. "Believe me, Mats knows that well."

There's a pause as Phil seems to consider this. "Okay," he says at last. "Give him a call."

*

Fortunately, Mats is not American. Unfortunately, Carl knows how much hell Mats is going to give him about this. Mats is the only person in the world besides Carl's brother who will know _exactly_ why he swapped with Phil.

Carl has a crush. It might be easier to say it's a longstanding crush, but the truth is he didn't regard Phil with any interest at all until they were teammates. Sure, Carl knew who he was — not many in the hockey world who didn't, especially by the time Toronto was through with him — but he wasn't anything to Carl except another opponent to deke around on his way to the goalmouth. That changed when Carl came to Pittsburgh, and now he's paying the price for it.

Carl sighs but dials Mats' number anyway, hoping he answers despite the unknown number. He picks up on the third ring, and Carl can hear the sounds of a gym in the background.

"Hello?" Mats says in Norwegian.

"Hi Mats," Carl answers in Swedish. "It's Carl. I've —"

"Carl? Are you — did you swap again?"

"Yes," he says sheepishly. "With Phil."

"Shit."

"Yeah. Look, we need your help. I'm in the States, and Phil is at my parents'. I'm going to fly to Sweden, but —"

"You need a reason for it."

"Yeah."

"Hey, 'Phil,' you wanna come to my hockey camp?" Mats asks, a little too cheerfully. "I know we've never hung out before, but Horny and Carl will be there, so it'll be fun."

Carl rolls his eyes. "Thank you. Really."

Mats laughs. "No, thank _you_. This is going to be chirping material for the rest of your life, you know." And then he asks more soberly, "You're okay, though?"

Carl shuts his eyes. This is the part of the call he was dreading, even more than asking for this favor. There's an emotional toll that comes with swapping; the forced intimacy with another person can leave you drowning in uncertainty. Carl's first swap, with Bobbie, wasn't too awful — they were young and had always been close — but the swap with Mats had taken them both some time to work through. Carl has been avoiding thinking about what might happen with Phil once they swap back.

"Yeah. I'll be fine," he tells Mats, hoping the waver of his voice is masked by it coming from Phil's mouth.

Mats hums, like he doesn't quite believe it but isn't going to call him out on it. "Let me know your flights, okay? I'll see you soon."

"Thanks," Carl says again.

"Of course." Mats hangs up.

*

"So, you and Mats, eh?" Something about Phil’s voice is weird, and Carl turns to peer at him.

"What about me and Mats?"

Phil shrugs in that way Carl has come to recognize as his _I’m uncomfortable but I don’t want anyone to know it_ shrug. "You swapped? Before?"

"Yes," Carl says slowly, not entirely sure why this is a discussion, nor why it makes Phil so uncomfortable. "It was my first season in the NHL, I was terrified; it happens."

"So you and he..."

"We swapped," Carl says more shortly than he means to. He's tired of talking about swaps. He feels like all he's been talking about for the last two weeks is swaps. "And then we swapped back. There wasn’t much to it. We both knew why it had happened, and we were able to get it sorted out right away. We didn’t even tell the trainers — it happened over a short break at the end of the season, and it was over practically before it started."

"Oh. How did you...?"

"I spent the night at his house, and the next morning we were back in our own bodies. Not much different from swapping back with you."


End file.
